It is not often that a group of people can receive a large cash windfall for doing the right thing. However, with respect to the charter school provisions in the Obama administration’s "Race to the Top" competition, it looks like Alabama is in position to do just that.

The hundreds of millions of dollars notwithstanding, charter schools would pay great dividends to the people of Alabama.

For those unfamiliar, charter schools are open-enrollment public schools. They are schools that are funded by public dollars, and that — unlike magnet schools — cannot discriminate in enrollment by ability or screen students for discipline problems.

Charter school operators make a deal with the school system to have greater autonomy and freedom in their approach to education, in exchange for greater accountability.

They empower parents and students to choose what school they want to attend, and must be responsive to the needs of their students or risk losing the enrollment that they need to keep the doors open.

Alabama is one of only 10 states that does not allow for charter schools. Since 1991, 40 states and the District of Columbia have permitted the creation of charter schools.

Success stories abound. As part of the "Race to the Top" program, the freedom of charter operators to open schools is one of the criteria to determine eligibility for funding. And there’s good reason for that.

Researchers have found positive results in several different studies. Caroline Hoxby of Stanford University studied the charter schools of New York City and found that, "On average, a student who attended a charter school for all of grades kindergarten through eight would close about 86 percent of the ‘Scarsdale-Harlem achievement gap’ in math and 66 percent of the achievement gap in English."

Scarsdale is a reasonably well-to-do suburb, and Harlem is in the heart of New York’s urban core.

A team of researchers from Harvard and MIT studied Boston public schools and also found positive results. Kevin Booker and other researchers with the RAND Corporation found equally impressive results when studying charter schools’ positive effect on high school graduation rates.

There are also systems of charter schools that are cropping up all over the country with similar success stories. The Knowledge is Power Program (KIPP) is a system of charter schools started by Dave Levin and Mike Feinberg, two Teach for America alumni, that has spread to inner cities and poor rural communities all across the country to great success.

These empowered schools have made huge dents in the achievement gap between white and minority students and in some situations, erased it entirely.

In the spirit of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., who implored us to act with the "fierce urgency of now," the state of Alabama needs to take this opportunity to not only improve the education system but infuse it with millions of dollars in fresh capital.

Rarely do people get $200 million for doing the right thing, but if it is going to work that way, why fight it?

Michael McShane is a Distinguished Doctoral Fellow in the Department of Education Reform at the University of Arkansas. Formerly, he lived and taught in Montgomery. His e-mail address is mmcshane@uark.edu. 